Friday, November 25, 2016

I've had a horrible cold for the last few days. One of those things that settles in your chest and doesn't want to leave. Can't breathe, taking over the counter meds, and just being miserable. I've finally reached the point where I think every sickness could well be my last. That too is a bad place to be --- but, might be realistic (at least a little bit).

Will be back with music as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let's all look at Mr. Trump with open and questioning eyes -- who knows, he might just be rather unpopular with his base as reality sets in.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

I tweeted this out earlier, but for blog readers here it is in this form.

Some morning-after
thoughts: what hits me and other so hard isn’t just the immense damage
Trump will surely do, to climate above all. There’s also a vast
disillusionment that as of now I think of as the end of the romantic
vision of America (which I still love).

What I mean is the
notion of US history as a sort of novel in which there may be great
tragedy, but there’s always a happy ending. That is, we tell a story in
which at times of crisis we always find the leader — Lincoln, FDR — and
the moral courage we need.

It’s a particular kind
of American exceptionalism; other countries don’t tell that kind of
story about themselves. But I, like others, believed it.

Now it doesn’t look
very good, does it? But giving up is not an option. The world needs a
decent, democratic America, or we’re all lost. And there’s still a lot
of decency in the nation — it’s just not as dominant as I imagined. Time
to rethink, for sure. But not to surrender.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

This from Robert Reich. Please read this, think about it, vow to relearn what The United States of America is truly about. Also, please do not champion secession while calling yourself a "patriot" - it just makes no sense to espouse treason while wrapping yourself in the flag.

During this year’s Republican primaries, Ben Carson opined that no Muslim should be president of the United States, and Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz suggested Syrian refugees be divided into Christians and Muslims, with only the former allowed entry.

Trump’s racism is nothing new, either. Republicans have long played the race card – charging Democrats with coddling black “welfare queens” and being soft on black crime (remember “Willie Horton”).

Trump’s disdain of facts is also preceded by a long Republican tradition – denying, for example, that carbon emissions cause climate change, and tax cuts increase budget deficits.

And Trump’s threats not to be bound by the outcome of the election are consistent with the GOP’s persistent threats to shut down the government over policy disagreements, and oft-repeated calls for nullification of Supreme Court decisions.

The second set of Trump enablers is the media.

“Trump is arguably the first bona fide media-created presidential nominee,” concluded a study by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy.

By mid-March, 2016, theNew York Timesreportedthat Trump had received almost $1.9 billion of free attention from media of all types – more than twice what Hillary Clinton received and six times that of Ted Cruz, Trump’s nearest Republican rival.

The explanation for this is easy. Trump was already a media personality, and his outrageousness generated an audience – which, in turn, created big profits for the media.

Media columnist Jim RutenbergreportedCNN president Jeff Zucker gushing over the Trump-induced ratings. “These numbers are crazy — crazy.” CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonvessaid, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. The money’s rolling in and this is fun.”

Not only did the media fawn over Tump but it also failed to subject his assertions, policy proposals, and biography to the scrutiny normal candidates receive.

Trump also used his own unceasing tweets as a direct, unfiltered, unchecked route into the minds of millions of voters. The term “media” comes from “mediate” between the news and the public. Trump removed the mediators.

The third set of Trump enablers is at the helm of the Democratic Party.

While Republicans played the race card to get the working class to abandon the Democratic Party, the Democrats simultaneously abandoned the working class – clearing the way for Trump.

Democrats once represented the working class. But over the last three decades the party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters who have focused instead on raising big money from corporate and Wall Street executives, and getting votes from upper middle-class households in “swing” suburbs.

Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and for four of those years had control of both houses of congress. But in that time they failed to reverse the decline in working-class wages and jobs.

Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.

They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the white working class – failing to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violate them, or help workers form unions with a simple up-or-down votes.

Partly as a result, union membership sank from 22 percent of all workers when Bill Clinton was elected president to fewer than 12 percent today, and the working class lost bargaining leverage to get a share of the economy’s gains.

Both Clinton and Obama also allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify – with the result that large corporations have grown far larger, and major industries more concentrated.

The unsurprisng result has been to shift political and economic power to big corporations and the wealthy, and to shaft the working class. That created an opening for demagoguery, in the form of Trump.

Donald Trump has poisoned America, but he didn’t do it alone. He had help from opportunists in the GOP, the media, and at the highest reaches of the Democratic Party.

The pertinent question now is: What, if anything, have these enablers learned?

There
are only a handful of days until Election Day and an end to this phase
of a nation’s — and the world’s — ebb and flow of anxiety. The day after
the votes are cast and counted that anxiety will either dissipate or
become a fixed feature. Which of these it will be is very much in flux.

While Hillary Clinton still maintains a lead in the polls and a built-in advantage
on the electoral map, recent polls suggest that Donald Trump is closing
the gap. There are now plausible — however improbable — electoral map
routes to victory for him.

I
leave it to others to make predictions about how all this will play
out, but I feel that I must say again, and until the last minute and
with my last breath: America, are you (expletive) kidding?!

I
simply cannot wrap my head around how others with level heads and sound
minds can even consider Trump for president of this country and leader
of the free world. The logic simply escapes me.

I
try to view it through the lens of economic anxiety, diminished
economic mobility and global pressure. It all seems understandable, but
then I’m reminded of Donald Trump, a billionaire whose businesses have on more than one occasion gone bankrupt, who stiffed contractors,
who outsources the making of many of his products and who brags about
not paying federal income taxes. All of which brings me back to: Are you
kidding me?

I
try to view it through a purely ideological lens in which people simply
tend to vote for the party nominee. It makes sense, but then I’m
reminded of Donald Trump, a man who isn’t really an ideologue but a
demagogue interested only in self-aggrandizement. And again I return to:
You’re kidding, right?

I
think of the family values voters on the right with whom I’ve become
acquainted over the years. Although I might have vigorously disagreed
with their positions and their inherent myopic anachronism, at least I
could say that they were as principled in their adherence to their
positions as I was in opposition to them. But then, again, I hit Donald
Trump, who is dragging traditional conservative paternalism into the
muck of perversion, who brags about sexually assaulting women, who makes fun of the disabled, who savors a lust for vengeance, who says he has never needed to seek forgiveness, even from God. Again, are you kidding?

I
try to think of it from a strict constitutionalist’s perspective, to
understand how strongly they want the vacancy on the Supreme Court to be
filled by a constitutional purist. But then I think of Trump, whose
Muslim ban would fly in the face of the Constitution, whose threats to
the press strike me as constitutionally hostile, whose advancement of
torture would seem to me constitutionally questionable (to say nothing
of its legality in the face of international norms and treaties). Are
you kidding, America?

I
try to think of it in terms of weariness with Washington and with D.C.
insiders, the Clintons in particular, and dynastic democracy in general.
I try to think of the intense Clinton distrust and even hatred that
exists in some quarters, sentiments only exacerbated by things like this
never-ending email saga. But then I hit Donald Trump, a real estate
scion who has been sued nearly 1,500 times and is currently being sued for Trump University deceptions and the rape of a 13-year-old girl. You have got to be kidding.

Donald Trump — judging by his own words on that disgusting tape and if you believe the dozen-plus women who have come forward to accuse him of some form of sexual assault or unwanted sexual advance — is an unrepentant predator.

To
put it more succinctly, Donald Trump is a lowlife degenerate with the
temperament of a 10-year-old and the moral compass of a severely wayward
teen.

There
is no way to make a vote for him feel like an act of principle or
responsibility. You can’t make it right. You can’t say yes to Trump and
yes to common decency. Those two things do not together abide.

If
you are voting for Trump, you are voting for coarseness, corruption and
moral corrosion. Period. And if you are not actively voting against
him, you are abetting his attempt to hijack American greatness and sink
it with his egotism.

On
Election Day, America faces a choice, and it’s not a tough one, but a
stark one. It is the difference between tolerance and intolerance. It is
the difference between respect and disrespect. It is the difference
between a politician with some flaws and a flaw threatening our
politics.

Donald Trump is America’s existential threat. On Tuesday, America has an opportunity to defend itself.

About Me

I'm just another old woman who has had wide ranging interests for a long time,
These include fishing, shooting, reading, cooking, and all manner of (mostly) left wing politics.
Born and bred in New York - Queens, to be precise - I now live in Texas, another state that folks seem to attack (like N.Y.) without ever having been here.
I'm also a fan of most sports -- esp. baseball, esp. the New York Yankees.
Originally a New York Giants (baseball) fan, I was crushed when they moved. It took many years wandering in the wilderness before I returned to baseball. I's all Wade Boggs fault. When I watched that artist, my love for baseball resurfaced. Since he was then a Yankee -- it had to be the Yankees.
The Mets pretended they had spiritual ties to the old Brooklyn Dodgers - no Giant fan could go there.
I tried - couldn't do it.